One or two Tuesday's later Dr G gave me more bad news. My baby had a heart defect. They were not sure exactly what it was yet and needed to wait till his heart was a little bigger.
For the third and last time he told me I could terminate. Once again, I did not answer. He asked me if I was making this choice because my baby was expected to die. I told him honestly, I did not know.
Before I left he said something like this to me, "I have had three other women go through this with different problems but the outcome was the same. One of them was very religious and trusted God would make everything better, she was the worse off when her baby died. Another woman refused to acknowledge it was happening, she did not fair very well. The last woman wanted to do everything, she went overboard and nothing she did changed the outcome. She did not do very well either."
Dr G told me he believed in faith and invited us to his church if we did not have one. He also told me we would do U/S weekly until they added no value. To that he added, "since you will continue with the pregnancy I will setup consults with other doctors to answer any questions you have about your baby's conditions".
My parents were staying with me because my Dad underwent open heart surgery. He was very sick and stayed for 5 months. Trying to hide the situation was very difficult so my husband and I decided to go to the coast for the week-end so we could talk.
The drive to the coast is two hours and I don't recall talking at all. I did spend the entire time thinking of what I should do. The next morning I was sitting on the bed in the hotel and we were talking. I said, "I know how much you hate it when I talk about woman's rights but this is going to be one of those times." I have a choice to make and you have one too. My choice and only mine is to terminate or not and I will not terminate. My baby might die but it will not be at my hands. It's your choice to make, whether or not you will stay. No hard feeling because I understand." He was really mad at me and went on and on about fairness and why did what he want, not count. He did not want to raise a handicapped child. He felt we should make the choice together and not doing so was selfish. Well, he was right but the one thing that would not change was that it was my body and I alone was going to make the choice because I alone would have to deal with the emotional consequences.
After my declaration we went to the beach. Ironically to the left of the spot we chose there was an older couple with a son that obviously had Trisomy 21. I said, "let's go talk to them but he said to me, you go talk if you want to, I have nothing to say." He was still mad at me but in retrospect I think part of it was deep down he felt I was right.
I went to talk to the woman. The man was busy with a book and I know what that's like. I told her I was carry a baby with trisomy 21 and was wondering about her son. She told me he was low functioning and mostly just banged his head on the sand but he liked the beach, I had the impression she had no regrets. When I got back, he said to me, "they look miserable". I disagreed but he was just trying to pick a fight so I went silent. Our day at the beach was over.
I neglected to mention when my amnio came back it was positive for Trisomy 21. The earlier FISH test has a higher rate of being wrong.
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